BEST RETROSPECTIVE (2006)

Shooting Star Vida Ellison Gallery

The subject of Shooting Star at the Vida Ellison Gallery in the Denver Central Library was painter Frank Mechau, who was born in Colorado in 1904. He left for Paris in the 1920s, and when he returned in the 1930s, modernism was among the many souvenirs he brought back with him. Shooting Star -- organized by Kay Wisnia, the DPL's gifted special-collections librarian for art -- revealed how Mechau carried out regionalist subjects in an abstract manner, thus successfully combining modernism with the down-home American scene. Mechau got a lot of mileage out of the formula during his short career. He died at age 44, but that was long enough for him to establish himself as one of the best Colorado artists ever.